It’s an interesting phenomenon. I think it really hit a family-pleasing sweet spot where it’s some kids’ favorite, including more boys that one might assume because stabby-stabby, but generally it’s a pretty good “introductory text” for exploring intergenerational conflict, self-acceptance, and squaring the circle of conformity vs individualism. The visuals are very of the moment and professionally done; it reminds me a tiny bit of the spider-verse movies in that sense. It’s all done well enough for most parents to tolerate replays. Then the songs are legitimately very catchy and sort of took over the role of the “summer jam” this year, prompting yet more rewatches, and finally Netflix in general has leaned into a lot of Korean media, meaning that aspect, watered down though it may be, probably helped with global popularity.
I dunno, kind of like some of the second- and third-tier Pixar and mainline Disney stuff, it’s not that it’s great, but a huge number of potential audience members collectively agreed it was very good. You can certainly argue it’s not even as good as that, but it did the numbers it did, even faced with the fact that it launched sort of semi-quietly, to the point where they had no merch ready for months and had to slap together the singalong to get it a quick theatrical run.
It’s an interesting phenomenon. I think it really hit a family-pleasing sweet spot where it’s some kids’ favorite, including more boys that one might assume because stabby-stabby, but generally it’s a pretty good “introductory text” for exploring intergenerational conflict, self-acceptance, and squaring the circle of conformity vs individualism. The visuals are very of the moment and professionally done; it reminds me a tiny bit of the spider-verse movies in that sense. It’s all done well enough for most parents to tolerate replays. Then the songs are legitimately very catchy and sort of took over the role of the “summer jam” this year, prompting yet more rewatches, and finally Netflix in general has leaned into a lot of Korean media, meaning that aspect, watered down though it may be, probably helped with global popularity.
I dunno, kind of like some of the second- and third-tier Pixar and mainline Disney stuff, it’s not that it’s great, but a huge number of potential audience members collectively agreed it was very good. You can certainly argue it’s not even as good as that, but it did the numbers it did, even faced with the fact that it launched sort of semi-quietly, to the point where they had no merch ready for months and had to slap together the singalong to get it a quick theatrical run.